Academic Staff Communications Committee Meeting Minutes

August 6, 2010

364 Educational Sciences (conference room)

Agenda

1.) Alice Pulvermacher is our newest member, but was not able to attend.

2.) We approved minutes from July 2 meeting with a note to do a Doodle poll to determine when we will meet regularly.

Minutes are at: Communications Committee

3.) We briefly reviewed the Academic Staff Survey.

* Some concern about relatively low response rate of 12 percent. Survey was sent out one time (rate would have been higher with more sends). There can be future possibilities to do other surveys that are targeted to certain segments of the academic staff (by school/college, and/or by position title, etc.).

* Greg will remove the "Other" and "Misc" comments from the qualitative section of the report before it is shared with ASEC. It was felt that these comments fall outside of the general themes and issues of the survey (of which there are relevant comments listed). The revised survey will be e-mailed to us (Communications Committee), to ask our permission as well to share it with ASEC.

NOTE from GREG (11/25/10): The results of the survey were formally presented by Sonya, Bob R. and Greg at the Academic Staff Assembly Meeting on October 11, 2010. A copy of the Executive Summary and PowerPoint presentation is at:

Academic Staff Assembly Meeting Materials Oct 10, 2010

4.) We discussed what we should include in next year's Commmunications Plan. A copy of the Plan was distributed at today's meeting, and this version will also be uploaded on the academic staff website in our committee's section. 
Since we did not have full committee attendance today, we did not specifically discuss the current tasks in the Plan. Instead, we can have a virtual discussion and also settle on tasks at our next scheduled meeting.

a.) Brian suggested we simply pull 2-4 things from the academic staff survey executive summary/report and insert them into the Communications Plan, as some items to focus on and communicate to ASEC, Standing Committees and other governance bodies.

- For example, based on the survey's results of some top issues and concerns of the respondents, some topics to be covered in 2010-2011 can include: salary, job security, merit salary increases, furlough days/plans and leave. There can be recommendations for ASEC and Standing Committees to focus on these topics. For example, when the Personnel Policies and Procedures Committee (PPPC) works on the Job Security Reports, we would recommend that summaries of these reports, and/or information about the process to obtain job secruity, be published on the web and also disseminated through brown bag sessions and workshops, etc. In addition, if there are academic staff that successfully receive job security (e.g., rolling horizon appointments), this should be publicized and acknowledged as well (so that more academic staff can see how the process of job security can successfully work, even during difficult budget times).

- Encourage Assembly Representatives to regularly (quarterly?) reintroduce themselves to, and contact the people they represent.

-Survey Assembly Reps to find out what they want and need to be more effective in their role. Then help AS Reps with concrete suggestions to improve their communications with the people they represent.

5.) Greg is our representative on the Academic Staff Welcome and Orientation Committee (a committee appointed by ASEC). The committee has yet to meet.

6.) Next meeting TBD. Greg will do an online poll of the committee for an appropriate time.